The Mythologization of Characters in the Iraqi Novel (2003–2024)

Abstract

The mythologization of characters stands as one of the most prominent narrative strategies employed by contemporary Iraqi fiction to reconstruct reality and interpret its cultural and historical complexities. Within this framework, the novelistic character is no longer conceived as an individual entity confined to the boundaries of personal experience; rather, it evolves into a densely layered symbolic structure that carries collective memory and its cultural representations. Through the deliberate appropriation of mythological reservoirs, the invocation of archetypal models, and their reconstitution within new narrative contexts, the character is transformed into a cultural sign that transcends its individuality to embody the problematics of identity and its fragmentations, while articulating questions of power, violence, death, salvation, and rebirth. The efficacy of this technique derives from its capacity to bridge the mythological past with lived contemporaneity, fusing the historical with the imaginary in ways that expose the deep structures of collective consciousness and endow the text with expansive interpretive horizons. Furthermore, the mythologization of characters is intrinsically linked to postmodern epistemology, manifested in the rewriting of mythological heritage, the deconstruction of its referential frameworks, and their reassembly within contemporary visions grounded in intertextuality, semantic multiplicity, and fragmented identities. This dynamic has empowered the Iraqi novel to interrogate dominant narratives and reimagine reality through symbolic and cultural perspectives capable of voicing the silenced, and of unveiling the existential and historical transformations that have indelibly shaped the contemporary Iraqi experience.